Sparse precontrast T 1 mapping for high-resolution whole-brain DCE-MRI.

PURPOSE To develop and evaluate an efficient precontrast T1 mapping technique suitable for quantitative high-resolution whole-brain dynamic contrast-enhanced-magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI). METHODS Variable flip angle (VFA) T1 mapping was considered that provides 1 × 1 × 2 mm3 resolution to match a recent high-resolution whole-brain DCE-MRI protocol. Seven FAs were logarithmically spaced from 1.5° to 15°. T1 and M0 maps were estimated using model-based reconstruction. This approach was evaluated using an anatomically realistic brain tumor digital reference object (DRO) with noise-mimicking 3T neuroimaging and fully sampled data acquired from one healthy volunteer. Methods were also applied on fourfold prospectively undersampled VFA data from 13 patients with high-grade gliomas. RESULTS T1 -mapping precision decreased with undersampling factor R, althoughwhereas bias remained small before a critical R. In the noiseless DRO, T1 bias was <25 ms in white matter (WM) and <11 ms in brain tumor (BT). T1 standard deviation (SD) was <119.5 ms in WM (coefficient of variation [COV] ~11.0%) and <253.2 ms in BT (COV ~12.7%). In the noisy DRO, T1 bias was <50 ms in WM and <30 ms in BT. For R ≤ 10, T1 SD was <107.1 ms in WM (COV ~9.9%) and <240.9 ms in BT (COV ~12.1%). In the healthy subject, T1 bias was <30 ms for R ≤ 16. At R = 4, T1 SD was 171.4 ms (COV ~13.0%). In the prospective brain tumor study, T1 values were consistent with literature values in WM and BT. CONCLUSION High-resolution whole-brain VFA T1 mapping is feasible with sparse sampling, supporting its use for quantitative DCE-MRI.